


Whenever I look up, there will be you

by middlemarch



Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: F/M, I don't think Troy was a good husband in ANY respect, Marriage, Morning After, Names, Romance, terms of endearment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 10:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19944538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Why had she waited? Because she had to, to find herself in this moment.





	Whenever I look up, there will be you

“Good morning, Mrs. Oak,” Gabriel said. It was an extremely polite greeting from a man wearing only a tangled white sheet and the sunshine. Bathsheba couldn’t help laughing though she had to admit, she made little effort not to.

“You’re amused?” Gabriel asked in the same serious tone he’d used in the night to ask if she was happy, if he might kiss her there and then there. To tell her, finally, she was beautiful.

“I suppose I am, though I’ve no reason to be. It is my name now, the name I chose,” she said. She saw at him watching her and wondered when he would look in the day as he had in the night, abandoned to himself, demanding and so soft, his affections completely unconcealed. She wondered whether she wanted that.

“Should I have called you Bathsheba? I’m not sure you like it.” 

He said it _Bat’sh’ba_ , so it sounded like the title of a lullaby. She heard Wessex in it and the roughness of the morning before the first cup of tea, the night that held little enough sleep. 

“D’you know, I’m not sure I do either. I’d have picked Iris or maybe something splendid, like Ethelfrith or Theodora,” Bathsheba said. She could hear the women in the house, the sounds of the kitchen, the maids in the hall. Gabriel shifted and the linen moved, graceless compared to his skin, his deft hands. She let out a breath and saw that he noticed.

“It’s a queen’s name,” Gabriel said, without saying whether that suited her.

“And you’ve an angel’s. Unless I am to call you Mr. Oak in the bedchamber,” she said. Was she surprised when he moved swiftly, his hand at her waist, the other stroking back her loosened hair, his body eclipsing the sun? Not very. She laughed again to see what it would do to him.

“You know—you play but you understand. And now I do as well,” he said softly. He meant how she had not known love-making, hadn’t comprehended a woman’s pleasure, a husband’s tenderness. How she hadn’t known she would gasp when he urged her on, whispering, _there now, love, come along_ , patient as if he hadn’t longed for her for years. When she’d cried out, he’d held her tightly, crooned _Sh’ba, Sh’ba_ in her ear and had waited for her to kiss him eagerly before he’d moved again.

“Good morning, Gabriel,” she said. He smiled and she thought she would tell him, finally, he was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> A brief vignette of the morning after Bathsheba and Gabriel's wedding. Title is from Far From the Madding Crowd though this is solidly movie-verse.


End file.
